Font problems

[Dan-Woodman]

To the CW guys
Has there been any furthar developments in the font area.
In particular, I'm having trouble with Kristen ITC. It's following all those extra lines that go up the sides of the letters and takes a long time to run.
Also , I typed in a fraze , to rout centerline,it routed one word and one letter and alarmed out with z axis stall. I think it was just a wood chip stuck in the belt . anyway I went back in to the software,deleted the letters it already cut, added back in exactly the same amout of space that the letters took up, but when I sent it back to the board, It was automaticaly shorter than the origanal.

[cmorlier]

I guess I am not sure what you mean by "all those extra lines". In the example I found here (http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/agfa/kristen-itc/), the only extra lines that I see are the extended lines (like the crossbar on the 'A') or the line ends (like 'U', 'V', etc). We try to reproduce the fonts as faithfully as possible, since we do not know what features are important and which features are not. That said we do have items on the list to further improve the centerlining, but no major updates have been made recently.

Can you post an example of the original and modified text that shortened on you?

[Dan-Woodman]

[img]
OK I'm not verygood at this computor thing. but this is the fraze I'm working with . Now if you can edit this text I removed the word "Laugh"
by useing the backspace and then added the spaces back in with the space bar but when I sent it back to the wood project it shorten's the whole fraze. I'm going to finish routing this the old fastion way with a router , but how can I correct this problem for next time. thanks
Also If you try centerline cutting it seems like it takes 3,4,5 minutes to cut each letter.

[John]

Something like this? I doubled the width of the board to show b4 and after. "laugh" was replaced with 10 spaces.

[/list]

[Dan-Woodman]

John
Thanks , I don't know how you computor guys do it , making 2 signs that is . later Daniel

[John]

Hey Dan, if you want quick carve time,do it in vectors. Top shows results, bottom shows the geometry. Carving time would be a tad over 7 min.

[soomro]

Dan, I thought I understoon vector, but I don't. Can you help me with a little explanation or example, please? Also, how do you convert text to vectors? Is that same thing as selecting raster option instead of outline?

[Dan-Woodman]

Thanks John
I also would like to know the question from soomro in the last post
The letters I was trying to rout Kristen ITC. if this makes any differance. thanks again.

[BobHill]

Dan and Soomro,

In computer/digital graphics or composition, there are two types of methods in composing an image file. One is vector, which is closely related to what you might see as "line art" or CAD drawings, while the other methos is raster, which is what JPEGs, GIFs, etc. are and can be refered to as photo type images.

A vector image is created by a algebraic type formula, which can be thought of like those X, Y graphic plots you used to do in albegra class in high school, each dot being able to to be noted on an x, Y grid by points, then an arc (by degree) can be applied to give the line between points ( called bezier http://www.moshplant.com/direct-or/bezier/ )at both ends of the line. Since you can make a grid fit any dimentsion between points, a vector image will retain it's quality and perfection to it's original creation regardless of the distance between grid lines.

A raster image is created by creating an image from squares. The size of each square is always exactly the same and always are in perfect rows and columns and never overlap (layers are a different animal and needed come in here). The plus to a raster image is that it fools the eye into thinking it's a perfect replication of an something because the eye "wants" to recognize it that way, AND the squares usually are so small the eye can't see that they are squares (like viewing a photograph which really is nothing but dots ramdomly placed). The problem with a raster is that the larger the square, the more visible it becomes to the human eye and thus the less quality for viewing it becomes until the distraction of the square completely makes the image of little value.

With the CarveWright, vector comes in by the way it cuts the wood. Like the "old" plotters used in drafting and todays computer "CUTTERS", this is when the bit would trace the outline (or the path) of the vectored object. It's what happenes when you outline a path and assign a cutter to follow this line. The raster image is when the cutter makes the carrage travel from start to finish on that image usually using the carving bit which will cut width way side to side; the belt will move the wood lengthwise in microns and the bit will once again cut widthwise and also, of course go up and down responding to the depth (Z axis) as defined by the design.

Others may have an easier way to explain vector and raster also, of course. Also since the CW is only a shades of gray recognition machine, the depth is controlled by the shade of grey from pure black to pure white in 256 steps (8bit color).

Hope this helps and doesn't confuse. For text to be raster it would cut like normal back and forth in width with the mikron movement. For it to cut text in vector, it would follow the path as John has shown where each letter has a path and definiton (tags) . This could be a center cut, like John shows, or an outline cut (not shown0 but probably would very difficult to cut unless the letters are huge and allow for the cut without interfering with it's look.

Bob Hill
Tampa Florida

[John]

Thanks Bob, for jumping in here.

I would only add:

Also, how do you convert text to vectors? Is that same thing as selecting raster option instead of outline?

Since there isn't a way to import a vector file, the conversion process is manual. Drawing the figures/font with the available geometric tools in the CW software.